Loss of Innocence
May 30, 2014
Last school year we were criticized for not looking before we leapt to the conclusion that some international transfer students at several schools were not eligible, and for ruling them ineligible for the then maximum allowable period of one calendar year.
In several cases – both school employees and others – told us that the students weren’t good basketball players, notwithstanding that it was people with interests in basketball who brought the students to our state, and that those people and others with basketball interests lobbied hard on the students’ behalf.
It turned out, almost without exception, those who appealed most ardently for the eligibility of an international transfer student actually had the least appealing cases.
In the case of one student, we discovered an online video made a year earlier, taped while the student was still abroad, touting his height and demonstrating his basketball ability. Not about basketball, you say?
In another case where “basketball was not the issue,” a student later committed to play basketball for an NCAA Division I basketball program in 2014-15. He went from “mediocre” to the Mid-American Conference without ever playing his senior season of high school?
We were criticized during 2013-14 for being too suspicious, but the results of 2013-14 will make us even more suspicious in 2014-15.
Fortunately, the MHSAA will have a more complete set of tools to address transfer students this fall than it has had at any time in its history; and after what has been happening in recent years, people seem ready – even impatient – for the MHSAA to be enabled to move with more might when students – either international or domestic – transfer for athletic reasons.
The Western Way
September 29, 2015
When he was in elementary school, my younger son Luke often traveled with me on MHSAA business. Today, Luke is living in Shanghai, China, where he is the principal of an elementary school for Chinese children.
The parents of these Chinese children want their youngster (it’s usually an only child) educated in the western way so the child can get into a western high school and college.
Those parents want their children speaking English. But much more than that, they want their children thinking critically and creatively. And they want their children engaging in extracurricular programs that teach teamwork and leadership.
Those parents want the kind of schools we operate in Michigan. They want the kind of programs we offer here.
We educate the whole child; and the whole world wants what we do.
Not only that – unlike most of the rest of the world, we not only educate the whole child, we educate every child. Most other countries don’t even try.